Deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution – today’s agricultural feed cultivation for cattle, pigs and chicken comes with tremendous impacts for the environment and climate. Cultivating feed in industrial facilities instead of on croplands might help to alleviate the critical implications in the agricultural food supply chain. Protein-rich microbes, produced in large-scale industrial facilities, are likely to increasingly replace traditional crop-based feed. A new study now published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology for the first time estimates the economic and environmental potential of feeding microbial protein to pigs, cattle and chicken on a global scale. The researchers find that by replacing only 2 percent of livestock feed by protein-rich microbes, more than 5 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, global cropland area and global nitrogen losses could each be decreased.

A heat wave sweeps through a city and people swelter, running indoors to find air conditioning. But crops out in a field aren’t so lucky. For them, there is no escape.

A new statistical approach to disease surveillance may improve scientists’ and managers’ ability to detect chronic wasting disease earlier in white-tailed deer by targeting higher-risk animals.

Mass losses of the Antarctic Ice Sheet have increased global sea level by 7.6 mm since 1992, with 40% of this rise (3.0 mm) coming in the last five years alone. In West Antarctica, mass losses today amount to about 160 billion tons per year.

As humans continue to pump the atmosphere with carbon, it’s crucial for scientists to understand how and where the planet absorbs and naturally emits carbon.

Beneficial rainfall from hurricane Bud's remnants has spread into the U.S. Desert Southwest after making landfall in western Mexico and moving north. NASA added up the rainfall using satellite data to provide a full picture of the rainfall.

NASA Terra satellite captured an image of Tropical Depression Carlotta as it was making landfall in southwestern Mexico where it weakened into a remnant low pressure area. 

Even “modest” action to limit climate change could help prevent the most extreme water-shortage scenarios facing Asia by the year 2050, according to a new study led by MIT researchers.

A common ingredient in toothpaste and hand wash could be contributing to antibiotic resistance, according to University of Queensland research.

I recently wrote a press release for another cool plant study CSRS. This time, a group discovered a process through which gene expression in plants is regulated by light. They found that blue light triggers a shift in which portion of a gene is ultimately expressed.